What trends should we look for it we want to identify stocks that can multiply in value over the long term? Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing amount of capital employed. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. Although, when we looked at Stamford Land (SGX:H07), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. The formula for this calculation on Stamford Land is:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

0.045 = S$48m ÷ (S$1.1b - S$31m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

Thus, Stamford Land has an ROCE of 4.5%. On its own that's a low return on capital but it's in line with the industry's average returns of 4.5%.

Check out our latest analysis for Stamford Land

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for Stamford Land's ROCE against it's prior returns. If you want to delve into the historical earnings , check out these free graphs detailing revenue and cash flow performance of Stamford Land.

So How Is Stamford Land's ROCE Trending?

On the surface, the trend of ROCE at Stamford Land doesn't inspire confidence. Around five years ago the returns on capital were 12%, but since then they've fallen to 4.5%. On the other hand, the company has been employing more capital without a corresponding improvement in sales in the last year, which could suggest these investments are longer term plays. It may take some time before the company starts to see any change in earnings from these investments.

On a related note, Stamford Land has decreased its current liabilities to 2.8% of total assets. So we could link some of this to the decrease in ROCE. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Since the business is basically funding more of its operations with it's own money, you could argue this has made the business less efficient at generating ROCE.

The Bottom Line On Stamford Land's ROCE

Bringing it all together, while we're somewhat encouraged by Stamford Land's reinvestment in its own business, we're aware that returns are shrinking. Additionally, the stock's total return to shareholders over the last five years has been flat, which isn't too surprising. On the whole, we aren't too inspired by the underlying trends and we think there may be better chances of finding a multi-bagger elsewhere.